LSST Science Pipelines Version 12.0 (Winter 2016 / Extra 2016 Release)

Version 12.0 of the LSST Science Pipelines (aka W16/X16) is now available.

If you have previously consumed an official release of the LSST Stack, please note these important distribution changes from previous releases:

Major Feature Development

With a new release schedule, this saw prolonged development. This release features a complete backport of functionality from the Hyper-Suprime Cam pipeline, in addition to many new LSST-driven developments. Even Astropy views of LSST catalogs objects are available.

Full details can be found in the extensive release notes. We have also published a Characterization Metric Report.

New: Install with Anaconda

In addition to the customary source installation, this release features two binary installation methods:

• Anaconda
• CernVM FS (contributed by Fabio Hernandez)

If you are unsure which one to use, we recommend you try the conda binaries. This is the first conda binary release though and it is always possible we did not anticipate all the problems “in the wild;” if you experience difficulties, please report them so that we can improve our testing (and help you!).

New Documentation at pipelines.lsst.io

Our release documentation and installation instructions are no longer on the corporate wiki; you can find them at http://pipelines.lsst.io/.

You are welcome and encouraged to contribute improvements to the repo on GitHub: https://github.com/lsst/pipelines_docs/.

New Release Schedule

The timing of the formal releases (which mark the end of each DM planning cycle) has precessed from Winter/Summer to Spring/Fall. This has been done to avoid conflict between DM cycle planning activities and the LSST All-Hands Meetings in August and February. In the future, formal releases will be in June and December. In order to precess the cycles to the new schedule, an Extra 3-month cycle (aka X16) was added, so 12.0 is a “bumper” release containing approximately 9 months of activity.

Join Us on the Community Forum

If you have questions or comments or comments about the LSST Science Pipelines, visit our new community forum for advice: https://community.lsst.org/.